Yale Develops Web Platform to Help Deal With Financial Crises in Real Time

Funded in part by $10 million gift from Gates, Bezos, and Bloomberg.

Policymakers will have a better chance of pulling the country through the next major financial crisis, courtesy of a new platform being developed Yale University.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the university was given a $10 million gift by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, and Peter Peterson to create an online tool that will help policymakers deal with a financial crisis in real time.

The gift will also help expand the university’s master’s program on financial stability in its school of management that trains future financial regulators.

The new tool will take the form of a database of “lessons from hundreds of interventions from past crises,” per the university. As the Journal notes, “Central banks often avoid extensive crisis preparations out of reluctance to promote moral hazard, leaving policy makers to reinvent the wheel each time a new crisis arises.”

The researchers working on the project will have their own advisory board, including the program’s chairman, former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke; and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.

Below, watch an interview with the lead researcher on the tool, Professor Andrew Metrick.